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Abstract

Global climate change is a vital issue facing the planet today, posing significant risks to both humans and the natural environment. This dangerous phenomenon is largely caused by the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, resulting from such activities as energy production and vehicle travel This paper examines the factors leading to differences in carbon dioxide emissions among countries, including income, energy use, and government institutions. A crosssectional regression indicates that an inverted-U relationship exists between per capita income and carbon dioxide emissions, but that the turning point at which pollution begins to decrease occurs at a very high level of income, suggesting that increasing income does not present a feasible solution to the climate change problem. Several other variables, including political openness and coal dependency, are also found to have significant impacts in the modeL These results generate important conclusions, and lay ground for future studies analyzing impacts on climate change.